It is generally accepted that taller golfers have an advantage when it comes to driving distance on the PGA Tour. All else being equal, the thought is that taller golfers will have the edge in comparison to their shorter counterparts. There are exceptions, but PGA Tour data from 2013 proves this to be true.
That being said, shorter players are still able to contend on the PGA Tour. Even as these shorter players are constantly out driven by their taller counterparts, they are able to compete by winning the battle on the greens.
Looking at the PGA Tour data from 2013, the averages hold true. Of 180 players on Tour in 2013, the 10 tallest players averaged a finish of 111th on the money list. Funny enough, the 10 shortest players also averaged 111th at the end of the season. There was no difference in the overall success of these players, but the stats can tell a story.
10 Tallest and Shortest Players on Tour in 2013, with scoring average rank:
So the scoring average rankings are identical, but these classes of players get the job done in markedly different ways. Looking first at the tallest players, they averaged 49th in terms of driving distance, but were all the way down at 124th in terms of strokes gained putting.
On the other end of the spectrum, the shorter players were able to recover from a far inferior driving distance ranking. Looking first at the shortest players, they averaged 129th in terms of driving distance, and were 95th in terms of strokes gained putting.
The stats show that these groups of players had very similar results despite markedly different statistics. This isn’t just true of driving distance and strokes gained putting – top players don’t have one single formula for success, and are able to succeed in very different ways.
The results show the following averages:
Further to this point, we can sort the data in terms of the Top-10 and Bottom-10 putters on Tour in 2013. Looking at the data in this way and then comparing heights, we see that tall players fared far worse in 2013. As seen below, Phil Mickelson was the only player (1/10) in the Top 10 in strokes gained putting in 2013 to stand taller than 6-feet 2-inches. On the other hand, 6/10 bottom 10 players on Tour were at least 6-feet 2-inches.
Although the sample size of one season is relatively small, there is a definite trend in terms of driving distance and putting results. Longer players tend to hit it further, yet shorter players can still succeed. In this case, there is a noticeable difference in putting averages.
Both driving distance and strokes gained putting are positively correlated with scoring average. Those consistently winning are able to combine success across a wide variety of statistical categories.
